Spirit AeroSystems (Booth 271) comes to the Singapore Airshow with a new organizational structure, a new joint venture, and an acquisition under its belt that will help its recently announced aftermarket division expand MRO services and spares support in the Asia-Pacific region.
In a bid to further diversify and grow its business, the Wichita, Kansas-based aerostructures supplier announced last September a reorganization that created three primary business divisions: commercial, defense and space, and aftermarket, which it expects to drive strategic plans across the divisions, diversify its customer base, and de-lever the company’s balance sheet to increase margins. Spirit wants to achieve a 40-40-20 revenue split between commercial, defense and space, and aftermarket divisions, respectively.
Leading the new aftermarket division is senior v-p Kailash Krishnaswamy, who told AIN that two acquisitions last year will help it reach its revenue growth goal and expand its market share in the Asia-Pacific region.
“Asia-Pacific has traditionally been underserved in my view and underpenetrated so far,” Krishnaswamy said. “And the reason for that is primarily we don’t really have a local solution for Asia-Pacific. We have repair stations in Wichita, Dallas, and Belfast. The Asian customer essentially has to send and ship its repairs halfway around the world. So it was always tough to penetrate that market. We are changing all that with partnerships in the region.”
Spirit's market penetration efforts have seen it pursue partnerships in mainland China and the Middle East as well as a joint venture (JV) in Taiwan with Evergreen Aviation Technologies (EGAT), which the Wichita-based company announced last April. Through the JV, Spirit and EGAT will create Spirit Evergreen Aftermarket Solutions (SEAS), transferring repair capabilities to SEAS and increasing manufacturing expertise and services to airlines and freight operations in the region. “It’s going to be a pretty decent-sized facility once it’s all certified and done,” explained Krishnaswamy. “Now, once you have a local solution a customer in Malaysia doesn’t have to ship it 24 hours into Wichita. They only need to ship it four hours by flight. If we set up these local solutions for our regional customers, we believe we can bring in the sales. So that’s how we plan to grow.”
The JV with EGAT also followed an acquisition earlier that month of composite repair specialist Applied Aerodynamics in Dallas, which expanded Spirit’s aftermarket capabilities especially with radome repair, Krishnaswamy noted. In addition to radome repair, the Applied acquisition added expertise in the composite repair of flight controls, slats, flaps, spoilers, ailerons, winglets, and main landing gear doors for the Boeing 737, 747, 757, 767, 787, and Airbus A320 and A321 models.